Would I Had Died Instead of You
19 Then Ahimaaz the son of Zadok said, “Let me now run and carry the king news, how Yahweh has avenged him of his enemies.” 20 Joab said to him, “You must not be the bearer of news today, but you must carry news another day. But today you must carry no news, because the king’s son is dead.” 21 Then Joab said to the Cushite, “Go, tell the king what you have seen!” The Cushite bowed himself to Joab, and ran. 22 Then Ahimaaz the son of Zadok said yet again to Joab, “But come what may, please let me also run after the Cushite.” Joab said, “Why do you want to run, my son, since you will have no reward for the news?” 23 “But come what may,” he said, “I will run.” He said to him, “Run!” Then Ahimaaz ran by the way of the Plain, and outran the Cushite. 24 Now David was sitting between the two gates; and the watchman went up to the roof of the gate to the wall, and lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, a man running alone. 25 The watchman shouted and told the king. The king said, “If he is alone, there is news in his mouth.” He came closer and closer. 26 The watchman saw another man running; and the watchman called to the gatekeeper and said, “Behold, a man running alone!” The king said, “He also brings news.” 27 The watchman said, “I think the running of the first one is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok.” The king said, “He is a good man, and comes with good news.” 28 Ahimaaz called, and said to the king, “All is well.” He bowed himself before the king with his face to the earth, and said, “Blessed is Yahweh your God, who has delivered up the men who lifted up their hand against my lord the king!” 29 The king said, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” Ahimaaz answered, “When Joab sent the king’s servant, even me your servant, I saw a great tumult, but I don’t know what it was.” 30 The king said, “Come and stand here.” He came and stood still. 31 Behold, the Cushite came. The Cushite said, “Good news for my lord the king, for Yahweh has avenged you today of all those who rose up against you.” 32 The king said to the Cushite, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” The Cushite answered, “May the enemies of my lord the king, and all who rise up against you to do you harm, be as that young man is.” 33 The king was much moved, and went up to the room over the gate and wept. As he went, he said, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! I wish I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!”
Two runners race to deliver news neither wants to say plainly — and a victorious king climbs to a room over the gate and grieves like a father.
Joab said to him, “You must not be the bearer of news today, but you must carry news another day. But today you must carry no news, because the king’s son is dead.”
Joab knows what this message is worth to the man carrying it, and protects the priest's son by sending a foreign runner instead. It is genuine consideration from the man who created the situation, which is exactly the mixture Joab always is.
The watchman said, “I think the running of the first one is like the running of Ahimaaz the son of Zadok.” The king said, “He is a good man, and comes with good news.”
The scene at the gate is one of the most finely told in Scripture: a king sitting between the two gates, a watchman calling down the sightings, one runner then two, and a father reading hope into a running man's gait. Every word is about the battle and every thought is about one person.
The king said, “Is it well with the young man Absalom?” Ahimaaz answered, “When Joab sent the king’s servant, even me your servant, I saw a great tumult, but I don’t know what it was.”
He asks it twice, once of each messenger, and the wording never changes. Ahimaaz — who outran the Cushite to get here and now finds he cannot say it — reports a tumult he did not understand and is told to stand aside. The Cushite gives the answer in the polite indirect form of the age: may the enemies of my lord the king... be as that young man is 2 Samuel 18:32. Both men have won a war and neither can look the king in the face.
The king was much moved, and went up to the room over the gate and wept. As he went, he said, “My son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! I wish I had died instead of you, Absalom, my son, my son!”
The name eight times in one verse, and no word about the kingdom. It is the rawest sound of grief in the Old Testament, and it comes from a man who has just been delivered from a son who tried to kill him. The wish is impossible and it is not empty: David would rather be dead than have this, and he says so in front of everyone.
The grief is also complicated in ways the chapter leaves standing. He is weeping for a murderer he never judged, whose crime he passed over 2 Samuel 13:21, whose return he half-granted and never completed 2 Samuel 14:24. Some of what he mourns he made. And Joab's brutal rebuke in the next chapter — that the army who saved his life is creeping home like men ashamed — is coming, and is not wrong 2 Samuel 19:5–6.
But a father who could have said he brought it on himself says instead I wish I had died instead of you, and Scripture does not correct him for it. The wish to die in a rebellious son's place is the nearest thing in the Old Testament to what the New says God did Romans 5:8 — with the difference that David only wished it.
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